Crown Media Taps Moseley

Crown Media Holdings Inc. last week named former Discovery Communications Inc. and ABC Television marketing guru Chris Moseley to the post of executive vice president of worldwide marketing.

Moseley begins work for Odyssey's parent company this week at the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing Summit in Boston.

Moseley will report to Crown CEO David Evans. Internationally, she will oversee the Hallmark Entertainment brand, which reaches about 22 million subscribers outside of the United States. She is also charged with reinvigorating domestic cable network Odyssey.

"We want to take a look at how we talk about the channel to consumers, operators and advertising decision-makers," Moseley said. "It's family-friendly, but it's also entertaining, not bland."

Moseley plans to team up with Hallmark's corporate marketing department to see what the two companies can do together to help promote the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" programming on Odyssey.

She has previous experience with cable and retail cross-promotions, as she was instrumental in launching the Discovery Channel Stores.

Odyssey will work closely with its affiliates at the system level to determine what kind of promotional support they're looking for on a market-by-market basis.

Moseley also plans to conduct consumer research before a possible revamp of the Odyssey tag line, which, she said, could be updated to more directly reflect the consumer proposition.

Primary goals for the network are to increase carriage and to drive more viewership. In today's crowded environment, Odyssey and Moseley have their work cut out for them.

"We used to talk about media fragmentation," she said. "Now it's down to the media splinter level."